AOL: customers down, ad sales up

They went thataway

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AOL's European ISPs in the UK, Germany and France lost 88,000 customer in the three months to June, parent company Time Warner Inc announced yesterday. Unfortunately, that's all it said on the matter and didn't provide any more detail on the individual performances of its European country operations.

Overall, America Online lost 668,000 punters during Q2 as its global subscriber base fell to 23.4m.

The Internet division of the giant media corporation said the Q2 decline reflected a decrease of 753,000 members in trial and retention programmes, offset partly by an 85,000 increase in billed subscribers.

Despite this, revenue edged slightly higher from $2.13bn (£1.18bn) in Q2 2003 to $2.18bn (£1.2bn), while operating income rose from $210m (£116m) to $276m (£152m)over the same period.

The two per cent growth in AOL's turnover was buoyed by an increase in ad revenues which climbed 23 per cent to $42m (£23m) led by higher revenues from paid search which notched up $31m (£17m).

Revenue from subscription to AOL's Internet access services was "essentially flat". AOL Europe chipped in $28m (£15.5m), AOL Japan $18m (£10m) and AOL Latin America $13m (£7m), which helped make up a fall in subscription revenues from the US. ®